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  Then he wants more of it, and soon he has all his own money back.

  The story might end here and what a lesson for the blackmailer. Or her victim now forces her to pay him extra money or he will go to the police. The victim becomes the blackmailer.

  Now she is in a very tight spot. It is an ironic end for a blackmailer and gives us a double twist. We don’t need to know what decision she then takes; we can just leave her brooding over her own greed and stupidity that led her here.

  This type of story must be structured and paced well for the best results of conflict, tension and suspense. Let’s also think of time period here: start as close to the end of the story as possible; start it where her victim refuses to pay another penny, which is really the inciting incident, if we think about it. Then slip in a bit of backstory about the earlier successful payments as the blackmailer wonders what to do now about her change in fortune. Its believability factor will be enhanced by choosing the right characters and developing them well, preferably with some quirkiness. Third person blackmailer’s POV would be interesting, or even first person, especially with humour added to the story. This way we only know the victim’s decisions when she does. She can be a very ordinary person who just got incredibly greedy and out of her depth. Her victim can be an ordinary person, too, who just found himself in an unusual and miserable position. The blackmailer might be a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and her victim an eighty-year-old ex-police officer. She may have discovered a terrible secret relating to his past. Or her victim might be her fourteen-year-old neighbour who is forced to hand over his pocket money to her. The victim might be an indecisive character whose indecisions create a tension and suspense that starts to eat away at the blackmailer’s self-control. We don’t even need to know the details of the blackmailing. It can remain a MacGuffin (a plot device, the specific nature of which doesn’t have to be explained as long as it performs its job of motivating the plot). This way we can sympathize easily with the victim. We might even start sympathizing with the blackmailer. If the characters are well drawn, they can give the impression of pushing the plot (the story will appear character driven rather than plot driven). Irony and humour would flow naturally out of a well-written story.

  ANOTHER EARLY DRAFT PLAN

  A son and his wife have brought his ageing mum to live with them as she’s no longer able to take care of herself very well. At first, the wife grumbled about money and the burden of an ageing parent who isn’t her own. Her own mother lives in a home, safe in the hands of professionals. The wife wouldn’t be so insensitive as to dump her mother on her husband.

  (Inciting incident)

  However, once the wife discovers the size of her mother-in-law’s pension, controlled now by the husband, she relents a bit over her change in circumstances. Of course, she feels entitled to a bit of the pension to ease her own discomfort at having her mother-in-law in the house. At first the husband abhors the idea of letting his wife take any of his mother’s money; but soon he realizes that her taking a small amount keeps the peace.

  (Middle part: conflict and rising tension)

  Later on, though, egged on by the wife, and after a bit of a personal struggle against it, he starts dipping into his mother’s pension pot for his own needs. Very quickly, they get used to the extra money in their lives, and the wife voices the opinion that they are actually still entitled to that little bit more. It’s wealth distribution from those with too much to those with too little. The son struggles again against the wife’s demands but soon caves in, conceding that her words do have an enlightened ring about them. (High point) They buy a new car and a house extension, and she buys designer label clothes for herself. She also indulges in a touch of plastic surgery. Meanwhile, the old woman is wasting away, going without essentials of food and medicine. As she is dying, the wife is complaining about a recently purchased dress not looking as snazzy as it had done under the shop’s lighting, which makes her feel disgusted by the world’s dishonesty. (Darkest moment) The son and his wife are shocked at his mother’s death. How could it have happened?

  (Climax (not a very heroic one) and resolution)

  A big argument over who is to blame. The wife manages to convince him it’s his mother’s own fault. Nevertheless, the son grieves for his dead mother. The daughter-in-law grieves at the funeral bill and the car and house extension repayments. How will they pay these bills without the old woman’s pension?

  You can twist the ending further.

  The dead woman’s sister leaves her property to her in her will, if she is still alive; otherwise another family member inherits it. The son’s mother dies just a week before the other sister, so someone else in the family now inherits his aunt’s money. Here is where we embed information in the story about this sister so that it doesn’t look like a tacked-on twist. But we must keep it low key so it’s not shouting out its importance. For example, the wife finds out from her mother-in-law that her sister has left her house to her in her will. The wife checks this possibly important titbit of information with the son. But he tells her his aunt has no money; she’s always lived in a cheap little council house with five or six cats. So the daughter-in-law mocks or patronizes her mother-in-law over this inheritance, just the once. When the son and his wife discover that the aunt had bought her cheap little council house decades ago and that it was now worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, each can blame the other for not keeping the old woman alive for at least another week.

  An alternative twist might revolve around an object the old woman cherishes. It could be a piece of jewellery, like a necklace that she likes to wear with her best clothes every Sunday. Of course, the daughter-in-law secretly has it evaluated but the evaluator informs her it is practically worthless. We can make a little scene out of this. She’s disappointed, and takes it out on the old woman by laughing at her when she sees how much she enjoys her worthless necklace. When the old woman dies, the jewellery along with some of her sentimental belongings are buried with her. Later, when going through the old woman’s stuff, the couple find an expired insurance policy for the necklace valued at a very high amount. The wife rants at either the stupidity or the deviousness of the evaluator. End the story with them wondering how to get into the coffin.

  The mother’s character should also come to life and the two alternative twists offer efficient ways of achieving this. She may be elderly and unable to fend for herself, but her character can still be snappy and sarcastic and she may well equal or better her daughter-in-law at sharp put-downs. In a story of black humour, these sorts of characteristics would fit in nicely.

  The third person dramatic POV would work well here. (We have no interior thinking in the narrative, but observe exterior actions and dialogue to gauge a character’s thoughts.) This perspective might work better if the story veered toward farce where the body language becomes exaggerated and therefore easier to read.

  THE THIRD FABLE

  The Ass, the Cock & the Lion

  An ass and a cock were in a cattle-pen together. Presently a lion, who had been starving for days, came along and was just about to fall upon the ass and make a meal of him when the cock, rising to his full height and flapping his wings vigorously, uttered a tremendous crow. Now, if there is one thing that frightens a lion, it is the crowing of a cock: and this one had no sooner heard the noise than he fled. The ass was mightily elated at this, and thought that, if the lion couldn't face a cock, he would be still less likely to stand up to an ass: so he ran out and pursued him. But when the two had got well out of sight and hearing of the cock, the lion suddenly turned upon the ass and ate him up.

  False confidence often leads to disaster.

  We are going to work differently with this fable. We are not going to analyse it for its storytelling elements first, but turn it straight into another fable, a modern style one. This simply means we will shift the theme, or the human flaw, and roughly the same plot and some of the stereotypical characters as in the Aesopic fable, into a mo
dern setting with human characters. If the writer cannot manage this without an analysis of the fable first, as we did with the other two fables, then by all means follow that route. The point of using this new technique is to discover how easily we might acquire a new idea simply by this shift of principal elements from an old style fable into a modern style one. Character is two-dimensional in the fable, but we will still get the same character attitude, the most important theme and plot-related aspect of character, in the new fable. So, our new idea in our new fable ought to give us something that can be worked fairly easily into an early draft short story plan.

  THE MODERN FABLE

  The Man & the Woman

  A man lusted after a woman, but kept from approaching her, fearful that she’d laugh off his advances, as her dates were always men with far greater looks and income than his own. One day, he discovered her new date was not as good looking as himself and earned far less income. Now his chest swelled with confidence, and he pounced on her, expecting a date. But he was rebuked with a laugh.

  Shocked and angry at the rebuttal, he lashed out, “No longer able to date the classier men, you now date a man with fewer good looks and even less money than me. So why should you turn me down?”

  She laughed again, “Your assumptions are all your own. I don’t judge men your way. My latest man is as good as any man. Your confidence was raised only because you thought mine was lowered and therefore my standards with it. You underestimate others in order to overestimate yourself. That’s why I’d never date you.”

  False confidence often leads to disaster.

  Sometimes, the fable delivers the message quite heavy handed, whereas in the short story we have to be a lot more subtle. If we create a modern style fable first to promote an idea, we can’t simply expand on its style and think it’s a short story.

  HOW ABOUT A SAYING?

  We placed the fable into a modern setting to try and acquire a new idea for the short. Now we’ll take the theme again, as we’ve already done with the other fables, and turn it into a saying. This will give the theme a fresh and ironic perspective which in turn may inspire another story idea.

  We can go from this:

  False confidence often leads to disaster.

  To this:

  A confident person recognizes the man from the shadow; a falsely confident person mistakes the shadow for the man.

  The point that false confidence often leads to disaster is strongly implied in the saying and would obviously often be the outcome of its second clause.

  SUMMING UP

  The fable shows us how to deliver on universal themes with a simple but powerful punch, even though this means character is reduced to a stereotype. By a thorough analysis of its storytelling elements, we have discovered how easy it is to manipulate the theme, character attitude, plot, wit and irony into fresh and imaginative ideas, though for the short story the theme must emerge through nuanced rather than through two-dimensional character.

  We looked at the abstract plot in the physical side as well as in the emotional side. By isolating the plot from the story in this way, we discovered another technique to help us manipulate the plot quite easily, which goes hand in hand with developing new story ideas.

  Creating sayings and a modern style fable based on the Aesopic fable’s theme offers us a further new approach for sparking up story ideas, while building on our ability to manipulate theme and improve on overall literary skills.

  CHAPTER 4

  Poems

  Here we discover what poetry offers us as a vehicle for inspiration and development of a short story idea. We will analyse a ballad for just this purpose, followed by a short story plan and then a 2,000 word story. We will also build another idea inspired by the poem into an early draft plan.

  We will examine a second poem, very different to the first, and attempt to turn it into a saying, and into both an old style and a modern style fable. With all that at our back, we will develop two fresh early draft story plans out of the poem’s message.

  WHAT DOES POETRY OFFER US?

  Poetry not only turns words into songs, but also adds the music. It uses rhythm, assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and repetition to achieve this end. Its musical tone creates a resonance, a beauty, a mystery and a meaning from the language not found in any other literary form. It uses rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor, metonymy and connotation and plays with a culture’s multiple meaning of words in order to bring together opposite and contrary images that spark something new altogether from the mix, something that gives us fresh and deep nuances of emotion and deep thought and new ideas. Irony, ambiguity and symbolism add to the multiple intellectual and emotional interpretations of poetry. Many great poems will never have a definitive interpretation as the emotional is often intertwined in a complex web with the intellectual.

  The short story strives to make a concise and precise use of words in its delivery of character, plot, conflict, tension, suspense, mood and setting. Yet, the writer may want to give the story a deeper meaning, deeper nuance of emotion and thought, mystery and inner depth than implied just in the words of the story themselves. The poem can work as an invaluable tool for helping the writer achieve this. It offers both the intellectual and the emotional as inspiration and guide, not only for basic ideas but also in the use of powerful and lyrical language.

  THE FIRST POEM

  Our first poem is the ballad The Lady of Shalott written by Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892). First written in 1832, it was published in its final form in 1842. The poem uses characters and motifs from Arthurian legend which were loosely based on medieval sources.

  Here is the complete poem.

  PART I

  On either side the river lie

  Long fields of barley and of rye,

  That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

  And thro’ the field the road runs by

  To many-tower’d Camelot;

  And up and down the people go,

  Gazing where the lilies blow

  Round an island there below,

  The island of Shalott.

  Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

  Little breezes dusk and shiver

  Thro’ the wave that runs for ever

  By the island in the river

  Flowing down to Camelot.

  Four gray walls, and four gray towers,

  Overlook a space of flowers,

  And the silent isle imbowers

  The Lady of Shalott.

  By the margin, willow veil’d,

  Slide the heavy barges trail’d

  By slow horses; and unhail’d

  The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d

  Skimming down to Camelot:

  But who hath seen her wave her hand?

  Or at the casement seen her stand?

  Or is she known in all the land,

  The Lady of Shalott?

  Only reapers, reaping early

  In among the bearded barley,

  Hear a song that echoes cheerly

  From the river winding clearly,

  Down to tower’d Camelot:

  And by the moon the reaper weary,

  Piling sheaves in uplands airy,

  Listening, whispers “ ‘Tis the fairy

  Lady of Shalott.”

  PART II

  There she weaves by night and day

  A magic web with colours gay.

  She has heard a whisper say,

  A curse is on her if she stay

  To look down to Camelot.

  She knows not what the curse may be,

  And so she weaveth steadily,

  And little other care hath she,

  The Lady of Shalott.

  And moving thro’ a mirror clear

  That hangs before her all the year,

  Shadows of the world appear.

  There she sees the highway near

  Winding down to Camelot:

  There the river eddy whirls,

  And there t
he surly village-churls,

  And the red cloaks of market girls,

  Pass onward from Shalott.

  Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

  An abbot on an ambling pad,

  Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,

  Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,

  Goes by to tower’d Camelot;

  And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue

  The knights come riding two and two:

  She hath no loyal knight and true,

  The Lady of Shalott.

  But in her web she still delights

  To weave the mirror’s magic sights,

  For often thro’ the silent nights

  A funeral, with plumes and lights

  And music, went to Camelot:

  Or when the moon was overhead,

  Came two young lovers lately wed:

  “I am half sick of shadows,” said

  The Lady of Shalott.

  PART III

  A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,

  He rode between the barley-sheaves,

  The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,

  And flamed upon the brazen greaves

  Of bold Sir Lancelot.

  A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d

  To a lady in his shield,

  That sparkled on the yellow field,

  Beside remote Shalott.